"I felt like I took a great responsibility - Raimi says about his movie - so to capture Spider-Man's essence and true spirit I concentrated on the character's aspects I considered truer."

"With great power comes great responsibility." Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker, and it seems like Raimi heard that, when he decides to direct the most beloved superhero because of his humanity, his authenticity, his  weakness and his vulnerability. To the point, as the director himself confesses,  he controls himself so that nobody realizes the "director's presence". Spider-Man's formal and sensorial richness lie in this respect towards the main character (but with a movie known as "Gioco d' amore" in Italy Raimi proved how he's capable of building stratified stories although he "hides" behind Costner's authorial/actorial force).

And so Raimi plays on the simplicity. So he uses the philosophy, the story and the spirit of Stan Lee's comic, with small variations, and focuses on the story's linearity. Because it isn't in the story: Because its ending isn't in the story or in the character: "Spider man belongs to children all over the world" he said, nobody can take him. But "Spider-Man " arrives not by chance in the beginning of this new millenium, while Superman represents America in the seventies and Batman in the nineties. Spider Man represents very well how everyone has multiple problems which get tangled up among each other, for them to be exposed narrative simplicity is imperative.

And the passage is narratively obliged: from suburban nerd , after being bitten by a genetically modified spider in a laboratory Peter Parker's DNA changes, and - more like the cronenberghian fly than a  normal superhero - he mutates rapidly. But this phisical and sensorial mutation is used by the boy ( Peter is the main character, unlike Robin "Wonder Boy", in the sixties the "boy" figure became autonomous.) exclusively for "normal" uses. His desires are simple: have the next door neighbor/school mate fall in love with him. But he needs a car for that and he enlists in a wrestling event to obtain the necessary money. But he doesn't realize his life is predestined. Uncle Ben gets shot by a thief (The same thief who he deliberately permitted to escape a policeman -this is like a September 11 premonition: Don't take care of someone else's problems and they will become yours) and as his first reaction he unleashes his force in an immediate revenge.

Peter is a clumsy hero, it's pathetic to see him bump into an ad while trying o use his web sling, but this is one story. In parallel, in fact, we have another mutation, Norman Osborne's, genius scientist who's in conflict with the administrative  council who wants him out of the company, who experiments on his own self his studies of the human body. Osborne develops a double personality which will become evil's symbol. But thats's not the catch. The "world" isn't the problem, the problem is personal: Peter's best friend, Harry, is Norman's son and Mary Jane Watson's boyfriend. Goblin will use the boys weaknesses to hit Spider-Man. We're still talking about "local" conflicts.

But if the narration proceeds in this direction which will hit the collectivity's imaginary, Raimi is less evident and works with what the film is made of... (images? dreams?).

Human or not, that's the dilemma . And young peter defends himself excessively against a bully, they call him a monster. Shortly after he will discover he really is a mutant.

That represents Spider-Man. In his web swinging in a digitally reconstructed city, from King Kong's point of view, in his web swinging from building to building, as if his web slings were connections of an urban hypertext. It is a reflection on the conflict between an individual and the world, between modernism and postmodernism. Between analogic and digital technologies. Peter is a mutant, even his webbing is organic, not mechanical  as in the comic book. He lives, suffers, loves, thinks and perceives as a being according to which communication  functions only as an "allusion of meanings", where the interpretation of thought that transforms it into knowledge. But, at the same time, it's an integral part of a short-circuit of communication where the role-model became mathematic, where the alphanumeric series and binary language become the favorite channel for knowledge.

That's modernity's conflict operating on Peter's body. A contaminated human body that moves in a digitally reconstructed city. Spider-Man glides in the city not over it, as if to indicate the that the body belongs to another. Raimi represents modern humanity's conflict (Morale? Scientific? Philosophical?), tellling us a linear story through images which are "processed" not subsequently, almost in a hypertext. That's the "love game" we'll have to deal with in this new millenium.

Traduzione a cura di Giuliano Capogrossi Colognesi